W - The First Arab President

Before ultimately pooh-poohing W's efforts Joseph Strabe, writing for TNR Online, allows W to rake in some credit for his efforts in the MidEast:

Shortly before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, I had dinner in Washington with a visitor from Cairo: Muslim playwright Ali Salem, one of the few prominent Egyptians who has consistently spoken out in favor of a warm peace with Israel. Let me tell you something you never heard before about George W. Bush, he said, as I remember it. He's the first Arab president of the United States.

A lot of thought had apparently gone into this observation--for Salem promptly launched into an extensive explication of the president's latest speeches, recalling key lines with a playwright's memory for rhetoric, all to prove how brilliantly Bushisms translated into Arabic and how resonant the president's ideas were with Middle Eastern audiences. Whereas most American elites favor nuance, Salem explained, Bush communicates to mass audiences in the starkest terms--just like Arab leaders. Was this a good thing or a bad thing? I asked. It is a great thing, Salem replied, because Bush will flip the Manichaean terminology on its head in the Middle East, turning the tables on dictators and militants. Like several other progressive intellectuals in the Arab world at the time, Salem believed that Bush's muscular policies would prove a boon to the beleaguered forces of Arab liberalism.

Nearly three years later, the course of events in Iraq must come as a bitter disappointment to the Ali Salems of the Middle East. But if we judge by Salem's criteria, Bush is still America's first Arab president--now more than ever. His latest speech on Islamic radicalism, delivered last week at the National Endowment for Democracy, went further than speeches past in defining the Islamist threat: Extremists, he said, "believe that controlling one country will rally the Muslim masses, enabling them to overthrow all moderate governments in the region, and establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia." He slammed Syria and Iran for aiding and abetting militants, while employing "terrorist propaganda to blame their own failures on the West and America, and on the Jews." And he faulted "elements of the Arab news media that incite hatred and anti-Semitism, that feed conspiracy theories and speak of a so-called American war on Islam-- with seldom a word about American action to protect Muslims in Afghanistan, and Bosnia, Somalia, Kosovo, Kuwait, and Iraq." You could argue that Bush overreached in his attempt to cast Islamist ideologues, Arab politicians, and Middle Eastern pundits as an aligned force. But there is no denying the boldness and clarity of his counter-narrative, which casts America as the Muslim world's liberator rather than its oppressor.